Session Four
This time I'm on time. But it looks like Dr. Lopez got here a little early.
I can see the second figure out of the corner of my eye, but I don't notice who she really is until I step into the room and past the bookshelf. My jaw drops. My mouth hangs open. I grasp for some sort of words to address her with.
"Cin--Cindy." She looks up at me with blonde locks framing her eerily familiar face. "What are you doing here?"
"I was hoping you'd tell me." She replies with a skeptical look at the good doctor. Dr. Lopez just smiles at her and settles herself at her desk.
I can only imagine the things that are going to happen here. I spent twenty six years of my life attempting to not deal with this. Attempting to forget this and get away from it and here it is being flung in my face, shoved down my throat and I'm expected to regurgitate everything. Eighteen years of everything.
"I figured you two hadn't seen each other in awhile, so I called Cindy and had her come in for a session with you." Dr. Lopez informs. I narrow my eyes at her and glare as much as I can manage.
"What do we need to talk about, Mark?" Cindy asks me. I give her a quick questioning glance.
"Don't ask me, ask Doc." I nod towards Dr. Lopez and she sighs.
"Well, since Mark isn't going to be doing much speaking..." She folds her hands again in that professional way and I resist the urge to roll my eyes at her obvious attempt at looking better than us. "Mark told me a few things yesterday about the state of your household when you were children..."
"Jesus, Mark..." Cindy mutters. I snap my head to look at her and her blues gaze back at mine.
"What's wrong?" Dr. Lopez asks, eyeing us both as though she were at a tennis match.
"That's so like you, Mark...it's so like you..."
"What!?" I explode. "What are you talking about?"
"You...you have this inner need to go tell everyone about our business!" Cindy spits at me. I don't want her to have this conversation in front of Anne. I don't think I can deal with it, the yelling, the questions, the explaining.
"Cindy...stop it." I mutter.
"No, I mean...granted, this is therapy and all, but what is there about our childhood that has anything to do with the fact that you're a basket case now?"
Dr. Lopez's eyes widen. I restrain myself from blowing a gasket.
"Cindy, you shut your eyes way too fucking tight when things went on there." I accuse. She looks offended.
"Oh, don't act like I was the only one who didn't fight back. I remember you taking a few knocks here and there without protest."
"I don't want to talk about that, Cindy." I insist.
"Who's shutting their eyes now?" Her voice is demanding.
"It's just...not valid right now..." I look to Dr. Lopez. "Right?" Her brown eyes gaze at me from behind those wire-rimmed glasses and she shakes her head.
"I don't know, Mark, is it?"
"I'm sick of that!" That's it, there's no stopping me now. "I'm supposed to ask you questions and you're supposed to answer them, not turn them around and interrogate me, because in case you haven't noticed, I don't know shit about myself!"
"Mark...calm down." She instructs. I wave my hand at her dismissingly, swatting her idea away.
"No, I want to hear what Cindy has to say. Why don't you tell me what you remember about dad?"
"Mark. Stop it." She insists. I shake my head.
"No, really. Tell me what you remember about dad!"
"Fine!" She stands and I stand, and the good doctor leans back and watches. "I remember when you played your CD in the kitchen while you did your homework and dad came home and you didn't turn it off fast enough. I remember that you never ran. I would sprint up the stairs and that would postpone the inevitable for about an extra minute but you never ran. I remember you were the only one that got his fists. The rest of us got belts. You were the only one who got face shots, he knew better than to hit the rest of us in the face, it'd show when we went out. But he had no inhibitions about popping you in the jaw. I remember how you used to come crawl in bed with me and cry when you were five and they'd fight right next to your room...I remember everything, don't act like I..."
"You defended him!" I manage to spit out. "You and mom and everyone! You sat there and said that he was justified in doing this!"
"What were we supposed to do!" She shouts at me.
"I don't know!" I shout, my hands furiously moving in cut motions, my head spinning in almost the exact same way, spastic and fast, thoughts streamlining and disjointed. "I don't know what I was supposed to do, but you weren't supposed to tell people that it was okay!"
"I never told people it was okay!" She shouts back in a flurry of anger that I haven't seen from anyone in my family in a long, long time. It scares me almost.
"No, but you told us! You told me! Every time it happened, it was 'You shouldn't have set him off, Mark, now we're all in for it' or...or...'You shouldn't have said that to him!' Like it was my fault for speaking in that place!"
I watch as Dr. Lopez scribbles down on the paper as soon as I say the word 'fault'. I cringe. Something is amiss.
"Well it was, Mark! It was your fault every time you got belted, you were so fucking cocky to him! Like you didn't expect to get something in return, when you knew what set him off!"
I stutter to explain, my hands running through my hair desperately. I'm scraping. She's right. It wasn't abuse, what I thought I'd gone through. It was my own fault I had been digging my own grave. It was as though Cindy was stepping on my fingers as they tried to hold on to my understanding of the family situation. And were losing their grip.
"You'd have us believe you were a martyr, sacrificing yourself for the sake of me, Melissa and Mom. Taking the beatings to protect us. and now you're going to sit here and play victim!? It was your own fault! Every hit, every bruise, every angry word was your fault. Deal with it!"
I don't reply, I just stand and pace. My face feels red and flushed.
"You weren't the only one that got hit, Mark, you weren't the only one who--"
"Stop it!" I shout. A childish instinct wants to cover my ears.
"Stop thinking he was a monster!"
"How can you not!?" I beg her. She glares.
"Because you made him that way!"
"That's enough, Cindy." Dr. Lopez interjects. My mouth hangs open stupidly. Unsure. Confused. Believing my sister. I caused all of that. If I had kept my mouth shut. Cindy sighs and stammers before she picks up her bag.
"I need to pick up Hannah from pre-school..." She mutters bitterly. She strides to the door, stops and turns to look at me. "I don't know what kind of problems you're dealing with. But keep them the hell away from me until they've passed."
And with that she's gone. Out of here like I was just another problem to be solved. She didn't want any part in it. I was in her way of being a normal woman. I was a brother in the way of his sister's life. I was a bad example. I was a sickness. I was a roadblock. I was nothing.
"Mark..." Dr. Lopez begins.
"No!" I shout, storming towards her desk. "I told you I...I said I didn't want to talk about that! I told you!" My voice is ragged, I'm practically screaming. "Are you happy?! Do you have all you need in that little notebook to diagnose me!? Go on, Doc, what's wrong, what the fuck is so wrong with me that I can't be near my own sister!?"
"Mark, please, let me..."
"NO!" I shout, louder this time. "Where do you get off!? Where do you get off making me miserable, forcing me into this shit? I said no, Dr. Lopez, didn't you hear me? I said NO!"
"You're believing her, Mark!" Dr. Lopez interjects. She stands and approaches me. "You're listening to her and you're believing her. She's got a very skewed view of your life, Mark. She doesn't know what happened to you most of the time, does she?"
I don't answer.
"Things have happened to you. Things your father did or said. Things you're not telling me, and that'd be fine. But the point I'm trying to make is that she doesn't know. That's why she's saying these things - because she doesn't know…does she?"
I stay silent. More silent that before. My breathing is shallow. I don't want to hear my voice, I'll be even more disgusted. I feel my stomach churn and I have the strong urge to throw up.
"Does she know everything that happened between you and your father? Your mother even?"
I retract from her and put my hands up.
"I don't want to fucking talk about this!" I shout, my face hot and red again. "I don't want to think about this! I don't want to care about this!"
"You have to, Mark, that's why you're here. You're caring about the wrong things too much and the right things too little."
"Don't...don't shove me in some category!" I spit at her, my eyes stinging. I will not break here.
"That's not a category Mark. It's your problem. You focus on the little to run away from the big."
"That's not true..." I point, still screaming.
"Yes it is. You numb yourself to the bigger events that happen to you and agonize over the smaller ones." She insists. She's wrong. She's so wrong.
"No!" I shake my head at her and pace. "No, you're wrong, you don't understand! You can't understand!"
"Then explain it to me, Mark!" She begs. "Tell me what you're dealing with so I can help you! Stop being so afraid of me, I'm not going to think less of you for what you're feeling! I'm going to try and help you figure out why you feel the way you do and why it's bad for you and why you're not able to deal with it in a healthy way. I just want to have you talk to me, Mark. Just tell me why I'm wrong."
"Because you act like I don't feel the bigger things!" I insist, eyes brimming. I swallow tears. No, no, no. Not now! "I do feel them! I feel so much that I'm numb!"
Dr. Lopez looks like she's struck gold. "What do you mean, Mark..."
I can't stop now. I've just got to get this out...if not for my sake then for hers. I open my mouth and every word is water rushing out.
"I do feel them, I feel them so much that they just stop eliciting responses anymore! I mean...I'm so used to feeling them that it becomes natural to me. It's an everyday thing for me to be upset so it shifts into the norm."
Dr. Lopez nods as my voice shakes. "So why do you react to petty arguments the way you do?"
"I don't know..." Dr. Lopez puts her hand on my shoulders.
"Yes you do."
"To get response to something, to react to something!" I shout, sounding like I'm in a complete rage. "Why can't I just get through one moment of my life without acting like a complete nutcase?"
Dr. Lopez shakes her head at me. "Because this is the way you deal with things, and it's not a healthy way..."
"I know that! I know that, why else would I be here!?" I'm not angry at her, I'm just screaming because I can. Because it's a release for me. I've done my fair share of crying, breaking down, having "episodes" whatever you want to call it, but none that felt like this. None where I was feeling such a release of emotions that I didn't know how to handle before. None that felt healthy. This feels healthy. This feels okay, I'm not screaming to nothing. I'm spilling it all out to someone. It may be a stranger, someone who I pay to listen to me bitch and whine and throw a fit, but it's someone. It's not the walls, or my blankets, or silence. It's someone. Responding to me. I don't know if that's awkward for her, or shameful for me, it's just releasing.
"You're here because you need something. An outlet, right?" She pleads with me again. "You need something to get all of this out to, and you think that no one wants to listen to you. So that's where I come in, you feel you can talk to me because it's my job to listen. But I want to help you, I'm not just here for myself, I'm here because helping people is what I love, it's what I'm good at. I didn't bring Cindy here today to hurt you, or to make you talk to me. I brought her here so you could see how someone else views things that have happened to you...if I had known that she was going to blow up like that, place blame on you, I would have never..."
I cut her off, taking a few steps back. "No, she was right!" I cry, feeling a twisted urge to laugh. "She was right, I brought all of that on myself."
"She's not right, Mark. I know your father's record."
"What record?"
"I handled your aunt."
I blink at her. None of my aunts have been in therapy. Not to my knowledge anyway. "Which aunt?"
"Your mother's sister Lynn." So she's not lying. I blink.
"What did she tell you..."
"Patient confidentiality." She lifts a cautionary finger.
"She knew? My mother told her!?" I rage again.
"Mark. Just calm down, alright?" She begs. I nod and I let out more hideously dry laughs. At least she knows I'm not lying. I nod and sigh, composing myself. No time for breakdowns anymore. "This is good for you. Knowing this and dealing with this now, letting it effect you is good for you."
"Then why do I feel like shit!?" I ask her, my voice still ragged. I may feel better for letting this out, but that didn't make it go away and I don't know why. Isn't that what's supposed to happen? I open up and things get better?
"Because that's not all that's to it. You've got to do more that acknowledge that it's there. You need to do more than recognize that you're blocking things out. You need to absorb them, let them in, let them effect you." She informs. Her eyes dart to the clock. Mine follow.
"We're 20 minutes over..." She apologizes. "Go home. Take a nap or something, just relax and don't think about this right now. We'll get into how to deal with it next time..."
